Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
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Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#2What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on objective beauty...
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#3> Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. On their side, bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. ...
> How then do bees detect electric fields?
Why is the answer not as simple as: The bees feel an attractive force when they are near the flower?
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#4Wonder how they managed to measure such weak signals from the flowers. Also not sure if signal is the right term to use, because from the article it seems that no information (in conventional sense)is being transferred. Charged particle q (bumblebee) feels some force (F=q*E1 since we can neglect magnetic field) that is the consequence of static field E1 from flower :) Although it could also be the other way round, i.e. the bumblebee could produce field E2 etc.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#5> Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. On their side, bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. ... > How then do bees detect electric fields? Why is the answer not as simple as: The bees feel an attractive force when they are near the flower?
They have hairs on the whole surface of their abdomen (for bees), and all over their bodies (bumblebees.
).
They probably feel the electric field gradient.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#6> Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. On their side, bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. ... > How then do bees detect electric fields? Why is the answer not as simple as: The bees feel an attractive force when they are near the flower?
Because the attractive force is so small. The net force of the electric field plus gravity is likely very similar to just gravity.
You may have rubbed a balloon on your hair, generating a static charge. You feel no attractive force toward the balloon, but your hair is pulled toward it, and your nerves can detect the changed angles of the hair.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#7What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on objective beauty...
You don't think the just smell sugar? Soda cans aren't beautiful but bees seem to love them.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#8> Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. On their side, bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. ... > How then do bees detect electric fields? Why is the answer not as simple as: The bees feel an attractive force when they are near the flower?
Because the force would be vanishingly small compared to the mass of the bumblebee. That's why the article speculates that bumblebees sense the field acting on their hair, which is actually plausible.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#9What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on objective beauty...
Coincidence - we like flowers, and admire bees. So we appreciate that bees are attracted to beauty.
Replace bees with flies, and flowers with manure (or plants that seek to attract flies http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0602.htm).
Where's the objective beauty?
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#10It's more like flowers are external memory, and bees use them to send signals to each other. Just like ants do with pheromones.